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one year of training.

Posted By: Timothy Chow
Date: Thursday, 13 September 2012, at 11:51 p.m.

In Response To: one year of training. (Robert Andersson)

Let me just address the first question:

How would split time between playing and studying theory?

The way you phrased this betrays, I think, a hidden assumption that "studying" means studying books and memorizing things such as match-equity tables and standard positions.

In fact, what you should probably spend the vast majority of your time on is studying your own play, especially your mistakes.

Of course, some amount of study of "theory" is necessary in order to give you the intellectual tools you need to learn from your mistakes. Except for a few opening and endgame positions, you're highly unlikely to encounter exactly the same decision twice, so it's not very fruitful to memorize the correct play in every position where you made a mistake. You have to be able to articulate what you were thinking when you made the mistake, and to articulate a corrected line of thinking that will lead you to the correct play in similar positions. For this, you need the basic vocabulary and mathematical theory.

But there's really not a huge amount of vocabulary and mathematical theory to master in backgammon, and you can get most of it under your belt relatively quickly. After that, you need to spend most of your time applying that theory to analyze your own games.

I don't think you really need to play that many games in order to get good. Playing games is needed for two purposes: (1) to generate mistakes for study, and (2) to give you practice applying your knowledge under real playing conditions. While it's possible to spend too little time playing and too much time studying, for most people it's the other way around (again, assuming that the goal is to get good). If you play too much, then you're generating more mistakes than you have time to learn from, and you're just practicing playing poorly.

Messages In This Thread

• one year of training.
  Robert Andersson -- Thursday, 13 September 2012, at 7:48 a.m.
  • one year of training.
    Stick -- Thursday, 13 September 2012, at 8:09 a.m.
    • one year of training.
      konstantin -- Thursday, 13 September 2012, at 9:34 a.m.
      • one year of training.
        Colin Owen -- Thursday, 13 September 2012, at 12:42 p.m.
        • one year of training.
          benf -- Thursday, 13 September 2012, at 2:18 p.m.
          • one year of training.
            Colin Owen -- Thursday, 13 September 2012, at 2:47 p.m.
          • one year of training.
            Peter -- Friday, 14 September 2012, at 9:39 a.m.
      • one year of training.
        neilkaz -- Thursday, 13 September 2012, at 4:14 p.m.
  • one year of training.
    Christian Munk-Christensen -- Thursday, 13 September 2012, at 9:03 a.m.
    • one year of training.
      Bob Koca -- Thursday, 13 September 2012, at 2:15 p.m.
      • one year of training.
        Christian Munk-Christensen -- Friday, 14 September 2012, at 10:29 a.m.
  • one year of training.
    niuniuch -- Thursday, 13 September 2012, at 12:52 p.m.
  • 6-8h/day
    mtuhtan -- Thursday, 13 September 2012, at 3:22 p.m.
    • 6-8h/day
      Stick -- Thursday, 13 September 2012, at 4:24 p.m.
      • 6-8h/day
        Casper van der Tak -- Thursday, 13 September 2012, at 4:59 p.m.
      • The main issue!
        Robert Andersson -- Thursday, 13 September 2012, at 5:43 p.m.
        • The main issue!
          Smcrtorchs -- Thursday, 13 September 2012, at 7:28 p.m.
        • The main issue!
          Phil Simborg -- Friday, 14 September 2012, at 2:29 a.m.
          • The main issue!
            Bob Koca -- Friday, 14 September 2012, at 2:35 p.m.
    • 6-8h/day
      Frank Berger -- Thursday, 13 September 2012, at 6:03 p.m.
  • one year of training.
    rew -- Thursday, 13 September 2012, at 3:23 p.m.
  • one year of training.
    Phil Simborg -- Thursday, 13 September 2012, at 10:51 p.m.
  • one year of training.
    Timothy Chow -- Thursday, 13 September 2012, at 11:51 p.m.
    • one year of training.
      Daniel Murphy -- Friday, 14 September 2012, at 12:59 a.m.
      • one year of training.
        Stick -- Friday, 14 September 2012, at 1:05 a.m.
        • one year of training.
          Daniel Murphy -- Friday, 14 September 2012, at 1:31 a.m.
  • one year of training.
    Strato -- Friday, 14 September 2012, at 2:37 a.m.